COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



slow and difficult, and memory is feeble. And 

 hence — what is most significant of all — the 

 old man does not remember recent events, 

 while he remembers very well what happened 

 in his youth, when his rate of nutrition was 

 rapid. These and countless similar facts show 

 us that a state of consciousness and a nutritive 

 change in the cephalic ganglia are correlated like 

 the subjective and objective faces of the same 

 thing. And thus are explained the many facts 

 which in the seventh chapter were brought for- 

 ward in illustration of the transformations of 

 vital energy, — such as the facts that conscious- 

 ness ceases the instant the carbonic acid in the 

 blood has attained a certain ratio to the oxy- 

 gen ; that much thinking entails a great excre- 

 tion of alkaline phosphates ; and that prolonged 

 mental exertion is followed by a bodily fatigue 

 and a keen appetite not essentially different 

 from the fatigue and hunger which follow mus- 

 cular exercise. 



Regarding it now as provisionally established 

 that an association of ideas is dependent upon 

 the formation of a transit line between two nerve 

 cells, and that the more often the fibrous path 

 is traversed the more indissoluble will be the 

 association, let us proceed briefly to apply this 

 doctrine to the explanation of sundry psychical 

 phenomena. Now as we begin to examine the 

 simplest psychical phenomena — those of reflex 

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